Are we pioneers of the next Evolutionary leap?

Quest for Lucidity General Lucidness
21

It’s not consciously guided in the same way a landslide isn’t consciously guided. If it works, it works. If it has somewhere to go, and the right conditions are met, it’ll go there. Evolution didn’t have someone designing each mutation, then testing the results to determine if that change should be made universal - it’s just a process of change and adaptation that occurs (for lack of a better word) at random.

Now, while the individual changes are random (some helpful, others detrimental), the key factor is that they work themselves out. You don’t need some almighty being watching everything from the sideline and judging what change should be left in, and what should be discarded… it happens automatically! If a change helps something reproduce, it will do so, and that change (part of that creature’s DNA) will be spread to its young, who in turn will be all fantastic at finding and having sex due to their parent’s gift. BAM! That gift spreads so fast that all who don’t have it can’t compete, and they crease spreading their old-fashioned genes into the new generations.

(I’m getting a little direct for my usual style, which means it’s just about time to go home.)

That’s what I mean when I say nothing consciously guided the evolutionary process. By definition, Evolution is a contained system that doesn’t require guidance.

Anyway, I am indeed an Atheist, but I think your definition isn’t entirely accurate. Being an Atheist doesn’t necessarily mean you pretend you ‘know’ that God doesn’t exist, just that you honestly believe it. We’ve been able to form the opinion that it’s simply not required that there is, or was ever a governing Deity. It’s fair to say that we don’t know for sure, but that’s valid in the case of any religion. Nobody does know, after all.

I wanted to be a little more elaborate, but it’s 5pm and I just can’t bring myself to work back in the afternoon. :wink:

Feel free to ask more questions.

22

I think Atheist is right, but since we have become conscious of the fact that evolution exists we can now consciously control it. If there is say a genetic predisposition for people having blue eyes if their parents have blue eyes then i could go round killing everyone with blue eyes and having children with those people who don’t, thereby making the human race evolve so that we don’t have blue eyes.
I guess the ability to LD might also mean that it is more likely that we at some stage in our life consider reality to be a dream even for only a second, so we might do something silly that gets us killed. I think this is probably a difficult thing to work out if it is advantagous. But think about it if we all got together to reproduce we could have many many children to overrun the world with LDers!

23

Perhaps the growing interest in things like LDing has more to do with the general availability of new technologies like the Internet than with Evolution.
LDing is being practiced for thousands of years by shamans, yogis and buddhist monks. But they didn’t have Internet to spread their word. They all lived in remote regions and their knowledge was hidden in myths and legends, which were totally incomprehensable for ordinary people.
The political situations of those times made it virtually impossible for natural LDers in western society to speak about their talents without being accused of heresy.
Nowadays, in the age of Information, it has become incredibly easy to find information about these kind of topics. We don’t need to travel anymore to the mountains of Tibet to find out about LDing.
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, people in western society forgot about the beauty of the human mind (I’m talking in general here). Instead of wondering about the mysteries of life, western society slowly began to loose its connection with the depth and beauty of life. They began to explain everything with a rational mind: the overwhelming depth and mystery of life was reduced to a bunch of chemicals which are able to interact with each other in various ways. Wilber calls western society “Flatland”, which I think is the best term to describe it. But people are not made to live in Flatland. With the coming of information technologies, people began exploring the wisdom of forgotten ages. Internet helped people to become interested again in the mysteries of life, and the human mind. They needed something to fill the gap which was created by Flatland. New Age is thriving. So it comes as no surprise that more and more people become attracted to things like LDing. They are fed up with the colourless world of Flatland. Many people have rediscovered the ancient paths of spirituality. LDing is one the many things which can bring back the spiritual colours in their lives.
In a way this is Evolution yes, but more on a subconscious level. But this Evolution isn’t possible if people didn’t invent the Internet. Well, perhaps it still would have happened, but definitely not that fast.

24

I think conventional evolution is dead.

Humans no longer have to adapt to their enviroment, they adapt their enviroment to themselves.

On another topic entirely, I think most people miss what being human is all about. With humans, our strength is our WEAKNESS. Without weakness we are no longer human. And it seems like much of society revolves around the concept of being a very expensive piece of machinery. Eventually we will make ourselves redundant if we think like that. Humans are inefficient beings, and we’re trying to merely become as effecient and productive as possible. Well thats not human. Thats machine. And we’re working very hard to ensure that we make our existence obsolete. Lucid dreaming opens up an arena that is very human. Dreams do not directly correlate with external reality, and thus from an efficiency point of view they are a waste of valuable time. By using lucid dreaming to its fullest we are opening up an arena that is most human.
Our weakness is dellusion. Our strength is dellusion.

  • feed_my_BRAIN
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" But think about it if we all got together to reproduce we could have many many children to overrun the world with LDers!"

Do you mean our forum members?If so we need to start booking the girls cuz theres not too many of them here:)
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yeah i do mean the forum members Jack. You seem to be the type that knows many girls, why don’t you bring them on the forum?

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Simply because i dont like them to have any other hobbies than me:)

Seriously…hmmm…i rarely meet the person who would be interested in lucid dreaming.Many of them know about it from own experience,many can induce dreams on will…but somehow it have never became their hobby.I talk a lot about dreams with all my friends but it takes a bit more than plain interest to become a member here and devote the time for posting.Language barrier also matters for some.

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I would like to make random pointless guesses on our future. Technicly anything could happen. We could learn to be a awake and take advantage through pure genetic luck, or we could already have the ability and be unaware of it. Oh well…

29

Ooh I missed an evolution debate! :tongue:

Anyway I think the next step will come from our better understanding of consciousness (that is the subjective experience that accompanies physical processes) and clearly altered states are great ways to investigate this.

As for Darwin/neo-darwin evolution… well I’ve already made myself clear on that. Here’s a great word for pro-evolutioners: biogenesis (the origins of how life itself came from inanimate matter). There must be some force behind life, just as there are forces behind law enforcement and physical events like landslides.

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This discussion reminds of something I recently read in the book “Get a Grip on Dreams” by Maeve Ennis and Jennifer Parker. On page 19 they wrote:

“This would suggest that, after millions of years, when human evolution stopped because it was limited by the size of the head, nature moved on and evolved another system, namely REM sleep.”

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Hah see this is what I love about evolutionists.

“We know we came from somewhere, and we can now observe this phenomenon, so we know that it Evolved. Any questions?”

“How did this happen?”

“uh… we’re still working on that”

And yet it is pretty much unquestioned by the majority who accept evolution as fact. “Something we can’t explain? It must have evolved”

Trying to answer truly big questions with physical science alone is impossible and whats more, dangerous (atom bomb was a warning I tells ya!) The next true evolution will come with some kind of hard evidence that something exists beyond the physical, and will hopefully change the way we live. Lucid Dreamers Unite!

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I didn’t read most of this, but someone said on the first page that it would have been better if Nukes weren’t discovered.

I’m personally glad they bombed Japan, because I most likely wouldn’t exist if that hadn’t happened. My grandfather was on the way to join American forces for the final push towards Tokyo when Japan surrendered. They expected well over a million Allied casualties in the battle.

So I’m glad they discovered Nukes :smile:.

EDIT: An evolution debate, huh? Just goto the following page which addresses many holes in the current theory: science.howstuffworks.com/evolution.htm

33

Oooh, evolution debate, next step, that 46+2 theory…

I’m sad I’m coming into this late :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

On evolution…

I think it’s interesting that a theory with as many possible holes, strong criticisms, and such as the idea of “macro-evolution as the sole “force” behind the current arrangement of biological life” has become, for all intents and purposes, a biological “law.” Not to say it’s not a very strong theory: it makes a lot of sense from a rational point of view, we’ve observed micro-evolutionary steps (yes, and minor speciation [if you consider species to merely be a group capable of interbreeding], mostly among plant life), but it has many shortcomings that question the validity of it. These are often discounted, because of just how pivotal the theory’s validity is to modern biological study.

On a similar note, countless people take it on face value, think that it has to be true, and anybody who even says “it’s not proven” or “it’s not an infallible theory” often gets dismissed as a nutjob. Speaking of “nutjobs,” I just got a copy of Richard Denton’s book, “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” that I’m gonna start reading soon. Nice timing ya’ll :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And I won’t even start about the people who say “Evolution proves the bible is false, therefore, religion is bullshit.”

It amazes me at the sheer number of people, mostly younger people, who become atheist for reasoning along the lines of “WTF IT R NOT POSSIBLE TO COME BACK TO LIEF LOL CHRISTIANS ARE TSPID THE CHURCH IS A METHOD FOR CONTRO WE DONT NEED RELIGION N E MORE!”

They’re just as bad as the people they criticise: the people whom have been force-fed their beliefs and completely ignore all reason and rational thought. Honestly, I had never felt more pity for a person than when I was talking to a girl about abortion…

I asked her what she thought. “I’m pro-life because my church is pro-life and I’m very devoted and faithful to the catholic church” or something along those lines.

I say “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, i’m not trying to be a dick, but… honestly, why are you Catholic?”

“My parents are.”

Nothing about personal beliefs, anything… just “my parents are.”

Anyway, next step in evolution… possibly? I think what this thread has illustrated though is that it probably wouldn’t be the typical, evolutionary step from the eyes of a Darwinist, but more along the lines of the metaphysical, higher being what-have-you step, if it indeed were the case. LDing doesn’t affect the Survival of the Fittest idea, as far as I can tell… of course, if more and more is unlocked about it, it could be much more powerful than even we know. Some of the ideas of astral projecting, the dream world existing on its own outside of our mind, DCs being more than just figments of your imagination… there are possibilities here, that if proven true, and if we can learn to use these ideas to our advantage, could really alter the face of human existence.

Course, it might be all in our heads, and just a fun way to do Matrix-style ass-whuppin :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Either way, I’m not gonna stop LDing, not gonna stop learning about it, reading about it, and ESPECIALLY not gonna stop running up walls and kicking people in the face at night. It’s funny, I was never a very spiritual person. In fact, i was brought up in a “Christian” household, but basically, for all intents and purposes, I was raised completely seperate from any school of religious thought. Never went to church, etc. Always considered myself very agnostic. Funny enough, in the past few years, i have been discovering more and more faith in a higher being of some sort, and also been very drawn to studies of the spiritual realm, despite still being a bit of a skeptic myself. Anyway…

On a semi-related note, i’ve had “46+2” by Tool stuck in my head for about 20 minutes now, damn you all!

BTW, anybody reading this ever seen the anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Okay I’m done rambling for now, sorry about the novel-length post :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

34

Wow, you guy,s & gals sure have launched into a big topic! I might as well put my 2cents worth in here.
I want to point out that I have LD most of my life and it was only yesterday that I found this site. I seem to have experienced the works without needing the internet “to evolve(?)”. Indeed LD is a natural capacity.
Evolution as a field of thought is a muddy pond polluted by all our beliefs & those that influenced our world view.
In my humble opinion we are all creators (I wish I could do italics & stuff) & that what we (you) believe will become real, we are the creator. Yes there is a God but that ultimate energy does give one scrap what we do with that creation. It doesn’t matter what you think, it is what you BELIEVE that will create. Often that is well below the concious level.
Even more, it is what we collectively believe that creates. We all should look very carefully at what we believe. We can do anything and indeed these conversations are helping to shape our very reality.
If others don’t hear what you or I say it is because that what we are experiencing has not been accepted in the general BELIEF. We can help change that & the world.
I feel that lucid dreaming is the tip of an iceberg, the forefront of our exploration & inhabitation of other dimensions. But we must gaurd against using it as an escape from our reality, as it won’t work. We must inhabit & learn to create positively in this dimension - our- dimension before we can hope to be a responsible inhabitant of others. If you are experiencing LD you may well be well along the path.
I highly recomend these books:
The Crack In The Cosmic Egg, By Joseph Pearce - an absolute ***###!! clasic.
Mind Into Matter, By Fred Alan Wolf - Ph.d. (physics)
Looking forward to further debate & Goodwill to all,
Mike
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